


Abyssal

by pally (palliris)



Series: dust to dust [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 18:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14478678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palliris/pseuds/pally
Summary: After his death, Peter lays in the dark abyss for forever.





	Abyssal

**Author's Note:**

> mmmmmmm yeahhhhhh this is gonna be a series

After his death, Peter lays in the dark abyss for forever. 

He remembers what it felt like to fade into nothing but ash, of course. It started as a tingling in his stomach that traveled down to his toes, then raced back up the hair on his back. The overwhelming sense of dread that accompanies the looming presence of death flowed through every pore and fiber of his being, until it felt as though the raw fear would consume him whole. 

(And it did.) 

Peter lays in the dark abyss, knowing and seeing nothing, save for an endless black hole that consumes and consumes and  _ consumes– _ but there’s nothing left of Peter to consume when he’s  _ dead, _ so the abyss’s loneliness and hunger is a feeling so familiar to Peter that he takes comfort in it, cherishes his faceless companion. 

If he had the energy for it, Peter would talk. He might go on for days, ranting of the cruel fate thrust upon him, lament the loss of the people he had known, grieve for the broken man he had left behind on that dying plane– 

Even if Peter’s mouth doesn’t work, his mind sure does. His thoughts swirl inside his head like a cloud of sticky tar. Bad, terrible things stick on the surface of his skull, pestering him and whispering unkind words about his death, and how he should’ve just stayed where he belonged. Other thoughts want to yell at the endless space around him, but remain locked in the confinement of his head. 

_ If I could just–  _

Time seems to flow irregularly. Sometimes he’ll drift out of reality for a few seconds, and wake up feeling as if a year had passed. Other times, he’ll stare unblinkingly at the blanket of darkness surrounding him for days and days and days that he ascertains are for but only a second. 

Peter doesn’t know how –  or how he knows – but he spends an eternity there. Watching. Waiting. Dead, but never truly gone. 

It’s a cruel punishment, this. Trapped and jailed without hope of rescue for a crime he had failed to stop. To only have the company of himself and the lonely abyss feels like hell, mostly, and he doesn’t think it could get much worse. 

It can’t get worse, right? 

(It does.) 

Peter begins hearing voices. They start off small, at first. Little snippets and blips of sound that can’t be above the smallest of whispers, but feel like shouting to his noise-deprived senses. He can’t move his lips to answer back, nor can he twitch his eyes, but he does yell at them from the prison of his mind. 

Logically, Peter can deduce that he’s hearing words. However, he can’t for the life of him decipher any of the ideas being spoken or the topics being taught: has no clue what to make of the gibberish flowing into his pocket of existence. 

It must be from outside of wherever he is. Peter’s had quite enough time to try and figure out where exactly he is, but whenever he thinks he’s found the right word to describe the plane, something deep down and alive and moving whispers,  _ no, no,  _ no, _ not that. _

Hell? Maybe. Prison? Definitely. 

But there’s something strangely soothing about the way the space around his body is held. Of course he hates the silence of his surroundings, but even that is tempered by the almost constant hum of words that flow in one ear and out the next. 

The crooning in his ear, the caress on his body. Silence, ever so elusive when he can’t stop screaming inside his own head, and achingly sensitive of space and perceived movement when nothing has touched him in a millennium. 

His eyes remain open, staring listlessly into the nothingness of the abyss, and beyond. 

_ Do I exist anymore?  _

_ Do I still take up space?  _

_ Am I really alive if I never move?  _

Yeah, sure, whatever. Peter concludes that even if he isn’t going anywhere, he’s still taking up space  _ somewhere,  _ so he should still exist. It’s a bit awful to think about, though, so he tries not to. 

One of the things that still remains uncomfortable to Peter in his forced solitude is the fact that he can’t hear or feel his blood moving. Before he faded to dust, his powers allowed him to hear the rushing of his blood to different parts of his body. It had become a constant thing that told Peter  _ yeah, you’re alive,  _ but now he can’t hear it anymore and that  _ scares  _ him. 

Peter doesn’t want to feel scared, of course. Because that’s weak, and Peter detests the mere thought of it. 

(He _ would figure a way out of here–) _

Sometimes Peter wants to just give up. The problem with that, though, is that he can’t quite do much of anything in the first place. Giving up might look like letting his mind go silent, or allowing his existence to slip into the air, like a flame that’s been blown right out. 

As it stands, though, there’s still the smallest of embers awake in the hearth of his veins, running through his body and connecting back up where he knows his heart must still reside. An ember that burns like a cold flash of pain, and sounds like silence. 

If he could cry, Peter thinks he might bawl. It’s a realization he comes to, suddenly and without notice, that he can’t. He should've expected it – given that he’s unable to move even a muscle – but he still mourns the loss of being able to grieve. 

He hadn’t remembered the Guardians’ names, and Peter realizes with a start that people’ll probably do the same to his own. Obviously the tale of Spiderman will reside in the hearts of those he had helped, but even that will fade away as civilians shoulder the mantle of their own lost ones. 

Peter’s lost to the universe. 

Maybe not to Aunt May, maybe not to Ned, maybe not to MJ; but who’s Peter to know if any of them are still alive? 

_ Half the population of all sentient life, just  _ gone.  _ Did they disappear like me?  _

Peter would never truly wish this fate – the nothingness, the abyss, the restless eternity – upon anyone, but when he’s feeling the ache in his skin enough that it reaches his bones and shatters them all, piece by piece, he allows himself to be weak, and finds comfort in the solidarity of someone who’s sharing his experience. That maybe, just maybe, he’s not alone in his suffering. 

Other times,  _ most  _ times, he hopes he’s the only one. There’s something about being the martyr for others that fills him with a sickening sense of regret, but also surrounds him with the childish hope of being a true hero that comes along with it. 

Martyr, man, hero, boy. Spiderman is a name he wears like a second skin, and one he would never prefer over Peter but still holds dearly anyways. It’s the name that allowed him to be  _ more;  _ more than his age, more than his name, more than his fate. 

Being a hero gave him that chance. The chance to become great was something all wide-eyed teenagers wanted, and Peter was no better than any of them. He took up the name, and he took up the dangers that came with it. 

Peter, Spiderman, saviour, kid– 

He remembers what touch feels like. Sometimes phantom brushes against his skin make him want to flinch, but he’s trapped in stasis. Touch feels real when nothing else is. 

Peter remembers Stark touching him, right at the end. The way his fingers held him, ever so sure and ever so hesitant, like Peter would break if they were skin to skin. 

And he  _ did.  _

In the rough, calloused fingers of his mentor, he faded to dust with only Stark as his witness. He remembers watching the man’s eyes finally,  _ finally  _ fill with grief. Peter remembers a time when he would’ve given anything to evoke that kind of reaction out of Stark. 

Now? All he wants to do is make sure Stark never feels that way. Not because of Peter, at least; never because of Peter. 

Peter wants to go back to Stark and tell him it’s not his fault. He could see it in Stark’s eyes, could see that he was going to blame himself for Peter’s death. 

But for now, he’ll wait. Plan and wait for the day, or minute, or second, when he can escape the confines of the abyss and make his way back to some semblance of normalcy. And after everything maybe that isn’t possible, but Peter will damn well try. 

Peter lays with his eyes open; staring, and waiting. 

**Author's Note:**

> u can find me @ palliris.tumblr.com pls yell at me


End file.
